Radiation Therapy for Multiple Myeloma

Radiation therapy can ease the pain caused by multiple myeloma’s damage to your bones. It may also be used with other treatments to help you fight the disease if it’s spread.

It’s not a cancer cure, but it is a treatment you’ll try along with drugs, surgery, or a stem cell transplant.

When You Need Radiation

Cancer drugs may not work well enough to fight your myeloma. If so, your doctor can aim a beam of radiation at a cluster of cancer cells to kill them. This treatment can also work on damaged bone to ease your pain.

But pain isn’t the only sign that myeloma is harming your bones. Cancer cells may damage your spine and cause its small bones to collapse. The cells can also press on your spinal cord and nerves.

If you have these sudden symptoms, you may need emergency radiation treatment on your spine:

Numbness or tingling

Weakness in your legs

Problems urinating or controlling your bowel movements

After radiation destroys your myeloma cells, your bone should grow back in that spot. With new, stronger bone, you should have less pain and a lower risk of a break.

External Beam Radiation Therapy

This is the most common type of radiation used to treat multiple myeloma. You may hear it called “EBRT.” A doctor called a radiation oncologist will create your treatment plan.

Usually, you’ll need a series of these treatments. That will last for several weeks. A radiation therapist will treat you at the hospital or a clinic.

You’ll be put under a large machine that looks like an X-ray. The therapist will aim a beam of radiation right where your bone’s been damaged or where a tumor is. Radiation attacks the genes in the cancer cells. This either kills the cells or doesn’t let new cells to grow and spread your myeloma.

An EBRT beam can go right through skin and tissues to reach the spot that needs treatment.

Total Body Radiation

If your myeloma has spread, you may need total body radiation. Your doctor may call it TBI. This would happen in the hospital, and you’d have to stay there for a few days.

TBI radiation can kill cancer cells all over your body. Your therapist can aim it at large areas in a series of treatments, usually during a few days. It’s given with high doses of cancer drugs or with a stem cell transplant.